After hearing about illusory superiority in driving with 80% of drivers thinking they are above average.
I've decided to conduct a super scientific poll to confirm this bias in the ozbargain community.
So overall in terms of skill, knowledge, safety, paying attention & being considerate, how do you think your driving would rate against the rest of the ozbargain community?
In SA and Vic you indicate left as you exit a roundabout if it is practical.
And in Qld.
You need it in QLD, you could land an aeroplane on some of those roundabouts.
I grew up driving in Qld - when this was the local custom in Brisbane -
two cars approach an intersection on a potential collision path
both attempt to go first - both brake at the last second to avoid the predictable collision
both wind down their driver's windows and shout abuse at each other
'Autres pays, autres mœurs. Different countries, different customs'
Incorrect. If you are turning left at the roundabout (i.e. first exit), you must indicate on approach to the roundabout.
The 'if practical to do so' only applies if you are going to subsequent exits.
@Nuggets: I haven't checked the wording, but isn't it more a case of…
"indicate left at exit unless impractical to do so"?
Edit
Ah I see a comment below has quoted the rule.
In NSW, always indicate when we exit a RA, unless it's a single lane and you're going straight.
Technically, when leaving a roundabout you are not going straight, you are leaving the roundabout to the left.
In NSW the road rules appear to state that "When you leave, you must indicate left, if practical to do so."
@Grunntt: I failed my P's once upon a time for failing to indicate left when exiting a roundabout, despite going straight.
@Grunntt: You are right, and I'm disturbed that you have been negged.
Going straight ahead
On approach, you can use any lane to go straight ahead, unless arrows show the lane is for left or right turns only.
You must give way to all vehicles already on the roundabout.
When you leave, you must indicate left, if practical to do so.
Exiting
When exiting a roundabout you must signal left, if it is practical to do so. You must stop indicating as soon as you have exited the roundabout.
When you travel straight ahead on a small single lane roundabout, it may not be practical to indicate left when exiting.
Still need to indicate if it is practical to do so.
@ihfree: Flushcombe Road Blacktown you just drive at the roundabout as fast as you can and hope for the best.
Roundabout roulette.
@jolee3: Thanks for the extract @jolee3
@All, this is what I was referring to:
"When you travel straight ahead on a small single lane roundabout, it may not be practical to indicate left when exiting."
Hence, my point stands.
For all those negative nancys who downvoted me:
Source
"Going straight ahead
There is no requirement for drivers to signal when approaching the roundabout, if they are going straight ahead. Drivers may approach the roundabout from either the left or right lane (unless there are road markings with other instructions)."
"When travelling straight ahead on a small single lane roundabout, it may be impractical to indicate left when exiting"
If AU drivers could learn to use indicators (on roundabouts would be a good start) things would flow better with less near misses!
Are you saying I can't change lanes mid roundabout drifting from the inside lane to the outside lane while also turning right?? And you expect me to manage with WHILE trying to use an indicator! Madness!
Around here we call that "morning traffic" :P
I can't change lanes mid roundabout
You can change lanes in a roundabout
@Krogers: I know it is allowed, but it is so dangerous on some roundabouts due to people not checking if there is a car there and not everyone knowing you're allowed to. There's a roundabout near me where people take a left, they go to the outside lane immediately to take a right shortly after the roundabout.
@Krogers: In Victoria at least when turning right they say this:
https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/safety-and-road-rules/road-r….
Turning right at roundabouts
If you want to turn right at a roundabout you must:
indicate that you want to turn right as you approach the roundabout, and
if practicable, indicate left just before the exiting the roundabout, keeping your indicator on until you have left the roundabout.
If there is more than one lane going into the roundabout, you must approach in the right lane and stay in that lane.
I get that some states specifically call out that you can, eg NSW (page 5): https://roadsafety.transport.nsw.gov.au/downloads/top-10-mis…
But none of their illustrations seems to show that scenario and I'd argue (as @newbo has) that it's often a dangerous/impractical choice on all but the largest roundabouts.
@The Hawk: You can change lanes in a roundabout, not sure why you're quoting these public service guides. Quote legislation if you have a point to make.
I came across this baby on holiday once.
https://goo.gl/maps/Ged137veJRR2k2bv6
Traffic going from west entrance to southern exit does so via the inner lane, traffic going from north entrance to southern exit does so in the outer lane.
If AU drivers could learn to use indicators (on roundabouts would be a good start) things would flow better with less near misses!
This is one problem.
The other problem are those that put them on, but believe that gives them an immediate right to change direction stapled with a requirement that other road users immediately give way to facilitate them.
You are not going to believe the amount of people, who are 100% certain that indicating before you change lanes is a courtesy, not a mandatory action.
Or that indicating means the car already in the other lane has to make space and give way to you
It is rather annoying, they signal to turn, you slow down to give way to them, but then they go straight.
Even if people used indicators theres still those who wait until theres no cars before entering the roundabout……
The number of time's I've waited for a car to come around the roundabout after they've indicated right when entering the roundabout to then go straight.. I swear people just make it up on the spot how they're going to signal.. if at all.
Used to drive with someone who would indicate AFTER he had left the roundabout and would get the shits at anyone else if they didnt indicate off a roundabout.
Please, all youre doing is confusing the crap out of people who think you are now turning left at the next intersection!
Lol.
Everyone who votes for vastly superior should post 30+ minutes of their dashcam footage so we can ensure validity.
I can park my car forwards or reverse in parking spots, and I even know before I start doing it which option I should choose…
How do you decide?
Obviously if it’s parallel parking I will generally reverse in unless there’s heaps of spaces empty.
It’s a joke poking fun at the reverse parking thread.
I don't think, I know.
with 80% of drivers thinking they are above average.
Well, if the other 20% are so terribly bad that they are off the charts, running over puppies every time they venture out, that maths could be possible :)
I'm one of those drivers that knows I'm a disaster at driving and is openly self-deprecating about it, and yet anyone who has been (un)fortunate to be a passenger with me still reckons that I'm being too up myself.
Yeah.. i think the right word to use here is median rather than average but that word is so lame that hardly anyone uses it.
Median house price. Very commonly used by the ABS lol
Exactly. The term average is analogous to median in this case, and not mean. Assuming no ties, and infinite precision
No get off my road option?
Missing two options. A top tier one with Motorsport Racing license and the last option as Bicycle /s
nah need another top tier
i played inital d and was 1337
drifting
Amateur. Gran Turismo licenses is where it’s at.
I’m a far better driver than anyone I know. I ride a bicycle to work.
Motorsport Racing license
Does that come with a "Jet Pilot" sticker?
Let's face it the Australian driving test is a joke compared to other places in the world, so what's average if even the best is shit?
so what's average
So something is definitely amiss if 80% of drivers think they're in the top 50%
average does not mean 50% though
if there were 10 drivers, who were reviewed for their driving skills out of 10
- 2 of those drivers got a 1/10
- the others all got 6/10
80% of drivers would be above average…
Your talking about raw test scores, I'm talking about what people think their test scores would be when compared to others.
In your scenario of only 2 outcomes, yes of course more people will be in one category over another. If everyone were to take your hypothetical test and if the average was found to be 7.5/10 when compared to the rest of the results, by definition 50% would be below the average of 7.5 and 50% above. That's what I'm talking about: comparative average or the better word to use would be the mean, not raw test scores which could represent anything without context.
better word to use would be the mean
Exactly..
hence why I said average does not mean 50% (just added some numbers to illustrate why)
But agreed, mean is the correct statistical term that should be used with such comparisons
@shkippy: If I understand correctly, it's not necessarily the case that 50% would be below and above that hypothetical average (uneven distribution). I think you are talking about the median value as mean and average are the same thing.
You have correctly highlighted what OP and everyone else is thinking of. I don't think people are really thinking about whether they are average when they say they are average. Interestingly the study that was linked to in the wikipedia article OP highlighted also used 'average driver' in the survey they provided to participants as the middle option between (I forget) and (very good driver).
Different perspectives. Half the drivers out there rekon just because they are driving 5kph under the limit they have never had a speeding fine they are excellent drivers. The other half rekon they can do a pretty good clutch kick and hold it for a few seconds so they are pretty good. Everyone else is somewhere in between.
My ex girlfriend passed her driving test, but when she changed lanes she would turn her head to look out the back window instead of using her mirrors, so she was facing backwards while driving forwards. Holy hell.
Oh man you made me laugh 🙂
I saw a learner do that exact thing in front of me this morning. I think someone downvoted you because you are in fact supposed to look over your shoulder. However, you said "back window" which is, while technically over the shoulder, is I believe quite a bit further than was intended. I don't believe you are supposed to contort your body so that your back fully leaves the seat and your shoulders end up perpendicular to the seat back, which is what I witnessed today… (or maybe it was your ex that gave you the negative vote…)
You're supposed to rely on your mirrors and "glance" over your shoulder for a split second to account for your car's blind spot (which isn't visible in your mirrors), but you really need to know where that blind spot is. She was just looking back instead of using her mirrors, which means she was turning around too far (literally looking backwards), and taking her attention off the road for too long.
@ForkSnorter: I have my outside mirrors positioned so that I can see the blind spots and use the inside mirror to view directly behind. Trouble is, when i get into the car after the wife has driven it I have to change them back again. Apparently she likes to look at the rear door handles while she drives.
@Usedtissue: Best to use at least 50% of the side mirror field of view for your own car. It's comforting, helps you know the car is still there and still the same colour.
@Usedtissue: You don’t have any blind spots due to the way you position your mirrors? Didn’t think that was possible
@leech: In one of the very first advanced driver courses I took, the first thing they showed us was how to position the mirrors to minimise/eliminate blind spots. If you can see the side of your own car, the mirrors definitely need to be pointing further out. Here is an article that has a good illustration of how the mirrors should be adjusted.
https://www.motorama.com.au/blog/motoring-tips/heres-how-to-…
If it's a learner then I remember being instructed to over-exaggerate the head check for the benefit of the examiner when you are sitting the test.
Maybe they are still in learner mode.
Funny story, on my driving test I blitzed everything but when returning to the test center I clipped a roundabout with my tire ever so slightly, which is an automatic fail.
The examiner turns to my instructor and says, "Did we hit something?"
The instructor goes "No… I don't think so."
And the examiner let it go.
I was sweating bullets but I think the examiner was feeling generous and it was his little way of saying I saw what you did but I'm going to let you off this time. :P
Can she spin her head 360 then I would be impressed
I have a high yield investment vehicle and am an inherently far superior driver than all of you plebs /s
Its not illusory, its mathematics. Quite considerably more than half of drivers are above average by objective measures. The people who don't understand that have delusions about their own mathematical abilities because they don't understand the difference between average and median.
The objective measure of how good a driver you are is whether you've had a crash that was your fault, and whether youve been booked for a driving offence. Bad drivers keep getting in crashes and keep getting booked, and tell themselves that everyone else does too. That its part of driving. But when you look at the numbers, considerably more than half of drivers go for year after year after year without a crash or a booking. They are the good drivers.
Lets look at the maths of it. That considerable majority will have zero crashes on their record, and zero demerit points. Since the average number of crashes and demerit points is greater than zero, we have on one side far more than 50% of drivers who score zero on both measures, and are accordingly better than average, and a much smaller number of drivers who score 1 or more on one of both of those measures who are accordingly below average.
The term "average" in maths does not divide a population into two equal numeric halves. The mathematical term for that is "median". Scored by any measure, far more people can be above average than below it, or vice versa. It is quite possible that 80%, or close to that, of drivers are in fact above average. It just may not be the 80% who think they are.
If you have trouble understanding that, let me give you a simpler example that demonstrates how a measure can result in a vastly different number of people on one side of average, compared to the other. The number of people who have committed murder is very very small. A tiny fraction of a percent. So the number of people who are "better" than average in the number of murders they've committed is way over 99%.
The people who don't understand that have delusions about their own mathematical abilities
But if you ask them, those people would say that their mathematical abilities are above average.
Well said, have my upvote @GordonD
How about those people whose driving skills are so bad that they cause collisions but not be in it?
Ie cause others to swerve/avoid them
I agree with you that the median is probably more accurate term to use here but not necessarily better. Many more people will understand the term average over median. Only in select data sets like the ones you've highlighted where a majority of people are skewed to one end of a scale or if there are extreme outliers on one end (like salary or real estate prices) will it really matter. But also by using your example it doesn't differentiate between drivers who have been lucky enough to not have ever been in a scenario where their skills have been put to the test and those that have and survived, both would be at zero accidents.
When you have a test that doesn't skew the majority to one end or have huge outliers on one end, average and median will be much closer together. For example if we were to run people through a driving simulator running worse case scenarios and give them a score out of 100. Now if the test is hard enough very few people will reach the perfect score of 100 and then we start to split up the majority that have no accidents and no demerit points. This would provide a more scattered data set with the majority being somewhere in the middle and the average and median would be similar.
I'm gonna assume (but I guess you can start your own poll to definitively find out) when most people are asked: are you a better than average driver? They would think you're asking whether they are in the top 50% of drivers with 50% of drivers also being below average.
Therefore for all intents and purposes the term 'average' will do just fine and illusory it is.
It is an illusion, and it is well documented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority I understand in driving it is hard to evaluate drivers on a scale of 1-10, and we don't have a distribution of drivers and their skills, but you will experience the same problem if you ask people if they are above or below average intelligence, most will say above, and IQ has a normal distribution, so your math example does not apply.
Not to mention your definition of how good a driver you are is severy lacking—completely ignoring the number of kms driven, the environment, and a car.
Somebody who does 20,000 km per year in a capital city and has had one minor accident in the last three years is probably a better driver than somebody who lives in a small town and does only 1,000 km per year.
And with the majority answering the poll with "vastly superior to anyone on the road" confirms this illusion extends to ozbargain no matter how you measure it.
I think this is not necessarily reflective of true opinions. For instance in any given ozb poll many people will vote "bikies" including myself despite probably not even being friendly enough with any bikies to ask such favours.
i have an above average number of arms.
You're conflating the definitions of 'good'. 'Not crashing' is measure of good skill, whereas 'a booking' is a measure of obedient driving to regulations not necessarily good driving to the road conditions.
Statistically the figures can be true if you consider that the definition of 'good driver' is not defined and hence people focus on what they think is 'good driving'.
OP, can you do one for motorcyclists next? 😂
I think that most motorcyclists, if they can survive being on the road regularly for a few years, end up being better drivers. The additional awareness one is forced to learn as a motorcyclist becomes pretty valuable to driving.
Absolutely, I have been riding since 16 (31 now) and riding does almost give you a six sense of what is going around you e.g. seeing tires drifting to a side giving you a headstart before car moves lanes (with or without indicators), looking at the driver through mirrors to see what they are doing etc. After a while you start to enjoy the prediction abilities so instead of getting mad you just get satisfaction from being right. No accidents so far; touch wood.
Seriously good point.
If everyone who passed their driving test was also mandated to complete 2 days of motorcycle riding/safety, the road would be a better, safer place
Or have an asian country driving simulator test with a million to one motorcycles to cars. 😀
Majority asia are motorcycle drivers, so Asians are actually better drivers then the racists who use illusory superiority to fuel their hate
Guess I was right all along
Since I have no idea what an average drivers skills are - how can I rate myself.
Dumb survey means dumb response….
Driving for 25+ years and never been even remotely close to being in an accident (including 5-6 years underage on a farm). Only gotten 2 speeding tickets in the whole time too. Would consider myself a very safe driver - but don't have the defensive driving experience to put myself in the top category.
Speeding tickets disqualify you from all top categories sorry
Yeah nah. Speeding (within reason) on an empty road with good visibility and paying attention is far safer than someone who's on their phone checking socials while "driving" in peak hr traffic.
Safer =/= Safe
You're right. Speeding is definitely not a factor in traffic accidents
The biggest problem in Victoria is drivers not going the speed limit and staying in the far right lane.
The right lane is for overtaking, not cruising along on your Sunday drive in the middle of morning traffic.
If you want to go slow, get out of the way. Simple as that. Let others pass and you stay out of the way.
The amount of times I’ve had to sit behind someone going significantly slower than the speed limit and or been “abused” by the same driver for overtaking them is ridiculous.
After Covid it’s only gotten worst as people didn’t seem to drive as much during that time where as people like myself haven’t stopped.
Problem is everyone is selfish and self cantered and do not want to give way or be courteous and so the cycle starts again and again.
I’m not the best driver or the smartest but I have common sense and that’s the main difference these days.
Much larger issue is the number of drivers who believe that driving at 10kmh over the speed limit is mandatory and if you are going 60 at 60 kmh zone, you should be gunned down.
much larger is people going 50 in a 60 thinking they are going 60
I’m not the best driver or the smartest
As a self-confessed tailgater, that checks out
I moved to Victoria a few months ago, and have noticed that stopping at red lights seems to be optional. Can you confirm?
The biggest problem in Victoria is drivers not going the speed limit and staying in the far right lane.
Bloody hell. Victoria is doing alright then if that's the biggest problem.
What’s truly scary is half of the population is dumber than the median…
that can't be true. :P
Sure, but they all could be just a tiny bit dumber than the median.
I’ve been wondering about this one - I reckon half the confusion/overestimation of abilities here comes from different ideas of what constitutes “good driving”
Is a good driver someone who has
1) never had an accident (but has speeding fines and sometimes tailgates/follows too closely)
2) never had a speeding fine or traffic infringement (but brakes too cautiously for the flow of traffic)
3) never had either (but doesn’t have a wide breadth of driving experience)
4) has just a few of each (but is a transport worker who has spends significantly more time on the road than average)
I remember reading about a Porsche test driver taking one of their cars on the autobahn to test it out - got to 300kms/h (or close) and causing other drivers to crash (and pass away). Very sad story, but a very real example of the difference “opinions of your driving skills” can make
I'd say I'm worse in some ways than average and better in other ways than average. I notice a lot of people don't indicate when getting off a roundabout, which is apparently the law. There's a lot of things that are apparently the law.